Honduras and the "Socialist" Obama
Published in the Manhattan Mercury, September 18, 2009
By John Exdell, MAPJ Board Member
In the early morning hours of June 28 the Honduran military sent 300 soldiers into the home of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya and flew him to exile in Costa Rica. In response, every Latin American country, the Organization of American States, the European Union, and the UN General Assembly denounced the coup and demanded the immediate reinstatement of President Zelaya to his office.
The Obama administration, however, was slow to act even though U.S. law forbids non-humanitarian assistance to any country overthrowing its elected leadership by military coup or decree. As the Honduran state and its military are heavily dependent upon U.S. aid, applying the law early and firmly could have quickly returned Zelaya to power. Instead Obama’s initial criticism of the coup leaders was mild, and he sought a conflict resolution compromise with the help of Nobel Peace Prize winner and former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias. Arias's efforts failed because, on his own account, Honduras's coup leaders refused any deal that required them to surrender the office they gained at gunpoint.
It took the U.S. State Department two months to find that the removal of Zelaya was legally a coup, and at this writing the U.S. has suspended but $30 million of approximately $150 million in U.S. aid to Honduras. Not until last week did Secretary of State Clinton revoke travel visas of the post-coup president, his foreign minister, and the supreme court justices who concocted a rationale for the arrest and eviction of Zelaya from office a day after the coup. The administration's delay and vacillation does not come from respect for the will of the Honduran people supposedly happy with the overthrow of their elected president, as was claimed in the Mercury's front-page July 12 news article. Nor is it justified by the moderation of the government installed following the coup.
A July 10 Gallup poll found that Hondurans opposed the coup by a margin of 46% to 41%. A month later 20,000 pro-Zelaya protestors filled the streets in the capital city of Teguciagalpa. In response military and police repression has become increasingly brutal. Amnesty International and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights have documented savage attacks against demonstrators causing hundreds of serious injuries, the murder of dissidents, thousands of arbitrary detentions, the denial of habeas corpus, the beating of journalists and other violation of press freedom, torture, and an absence of any effective protections from such abuse. Indeed, the de facto head of state has appointed a notorious former death squad leader as his chief of security. Though unreported by the U.S. press, including this paper, post-coup Honduras is now very close to a police state.
The Obama administration's foot-dragging has to do with President Zelaya's decision to turn against the U.S.-imposed model of let-her-rip capitalism. Honduras is a desperately poor country in the grip of a corrupt propertied elite tied to American corporate and military interests. Zelaya had decided to end Honduras's subservience to the U.S. free market order by means of an alliance with the leftist and nationalist governments of Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela, and Cuba. That left President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton torn between democratic values and their commitment to a world where profit opportunities for the few engulf every corner of every continent from sea to shining sea. Right-wing critics who accuse Obama of "socialism" can't see the President for what he plainly is - a middle-of-the-road corporate liberal ready to serve the priorities of an American-led global plutocracy. Unless pushed hard by strong social movements demanding a break with corporate interests, we can expect this administration to be weak-kneed in all policy areas - e.g., on banking reform, climate change, and health care, just as it has been on the coup in Honduras.
